


out come the gaunt ghosts of your thoughts

by transmutes



Category: True Detective
Genre: Gen, M/M, Post-Series, Rust POV, true detective season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-31
Updated: 2014-03-31
Packaged: 2018-01-17 15:48:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1393372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transmutes/pseuds/transmutes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-finale.</p><p>Rust deals with trauma and tries to navigate the new, less hateful rhythm in his relationship with Marty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	out come the gaunt ghosts of your thoughts

Smoke curls around him as Rust sits on the balcony, the orange tip of the cigarette glowing against the hushed twilight. It's been a month since Carcosa, and he's still crashing at Marty's place. That is to say, Marty has threatened to fucking murder him if he thinks about leaving until he's fully healed.

"I don't want to hear about you slippin' and fallin' the shower and dying or some shit, like an old lady," Marty had said. Maybe years before he would have felt differently, but this time Rust didn't even bother to put up a fight.

So Rust sits and smokes in some tacky-ass lawn chair Marty has arranged on his balcony. He fidgets, bouncing his legs a little until it makes the pink puckering of scars on his stomach smart. He's restless, feeling like he could burst out of his skin, the beginnings of a migraine pulsing in the back of his head.

Whenever he lets his his lids close too long, he sees things: twisting thickets lining a maze of tunnels; Childress's yellowed teeth grinning in the darkness; blood seeping between his fingers. Then, the weight of Sophia hugging his legs.

The glass door slides open and there's Marty, holding two bottles of seltzer water and a carton of strawberries. Rust doesn't acknowledge him, just lights another cigarette and inhales.

"Hello to you too, asshole. Just thought you might want to, y'know, enjoy the pleasure of my company," Marty says, wearing an obnoxious shit-eating grin.

Rust allows him a nod as Marty lowers himself into the other lawn chair. He offers Rust a seltzer water, lime flavored.

"The fuck is this?" Rust asks, a little shakier than he intends because he can still see imprints of Sophia when he closes his eyes. He eyes the bottle with displeasure. He could sure use a real fucking drink right about now.

"Jesus, is it really so hard for you to say 'thank you' like the rest of us civilized adults?"

"Thanks. Tastes like shit," Rust says, raising the bottle to Marty in a toast.

Marty just rolls his eyes as he pops up the lid of the strawberries, holding it out to Rust after he's put a handful in his lap.

"Thought you might be hungry. Been tryin' to eat healthier lately and this here is the cream of the crop, at least according to the lady at the fruit stand," Marty says, through a mouth half full and still chewing.

Rust stares down at the carton, as ash from the cigarette in his fingers falls on his leg.

"Hey," Marty says all of the sudden, snapping his fingers in front of Rust's eyes, "what's your deal? You've been starin' at the strawberries for like, two minutes, all haunted-like. Creepin' me out."

Rust blinks once, twice, real slow to try and make his eyes less glazed over, but there's always been a heavy lidded, vacant quality to his face that stretches back to his narco days, maybe even since Sophia's accident that he's never bothered to correct.

It's not really the strawberries; it's just he can't really stave off unbidden images and memories pounding inside his skull that he doesn't want to fucking sort through right now.

Rust hesitates, inhaling deep before he begins to respond, but Marty cuts him off.

"You know what, man, never mind. I don't really wanna hear a sermon on what Descartes has to say about fruit right now," says Marty with an indulgent smile, probably proud because he knows the name of at least one goddamn philosopher, thank you very much.

Rust doesn't bother to point out any of Descartes's actual philosophy, or that you don't fucking pronounce it "Dess-carts", asshole, but good on you for trying. He just extinguishes his cigarette, swallows the words back down his throat and leans back, neck resting against the metal of the lawn chair. He looks out at the sky still deepening from navy to an inky blackness, only just starting to fleck with starlight.

Truth is, even if Marty thinks that Rust still has no filter, always running his mouth about whatever pops in his head, Rust exerts a lot of control over what thoughts he actually translates into words. Sometimes he can't think straight through all that's swirling in his head; he usually has to stop them, shake them off before allowing himself to respond so people don't think he's certifiably insane. They think he's insane anyway, of course, but they don't really know the half of it.

Silences falls over them as Rust sinks his teeth into another strawberry. He blinks and the sky starts changing. He hallucinates lightning in the sky, deep roiling clouds that aren't the right color, hail pouring down but never quite reaching the ground. He searches for a point to focus on as he rides the hallucination out, and looks down at Marty's shoes.

A new barrage of thoughts being pounding against his skull. Rust relents and lets them wash over him:

Claire and him sitting on the porch at dusk, her pregnant belly swollen under her sundress. Carefree in their mid-twenties, no fucking clue what's in store for them. He's laughing, teasing Claire because she's takes so long to pick out a strawberry she deems acceptable. She inspects each one carefully to make sure there's no bruising, no deformities, as thought she'll be poisoned or something if an imperfect strawberry passes through her lips. She's looking at the strawberries with such fervor, such concentration, and he thinks, this is damn near the happiest I can remember being. Claire plops a strawberry in his mouth. He wipes juice from her chin with his thumb.

Juice from a peach dribbling down Sophia's chin, her nose scrunching up with the wild, uncontrolled laughter of a toddler. Sophia's strawberry blonde hair glinting in the summer heat. The sun leaving freckles on her nose. A small, sticky hand wrapping around one of Rust's fingers as grass in need of mowing tickles their bare feet.

Maybe a week later, Sophia lying in the road, tiny body limp and all wrong. Claire's screams echoing in the air, carrying over the sound of the idling lawnmower Rust abandoned at the squeal of the tires. The dirt from the garden still on Claire's hands, leaving smudged handprints on Sophia's pink dress. The tricycle crumpled. Blood on the sidewalk.

Screaming at Claire and her screaming back, six months after they bury Sophia. Rust knows it's over, that there's no going back to a time they both weren't so goddamn fucked up. You should have been watching, she yells, but she should have been watching too. Next thing, Rust's punching a hole in the wall. Purple bruising knuckles. His bags are packed, ready to leave, and he never fixes the hole.

White walls at North Shore. It's clinical and cold and Rust welcomes it. Spotless white walls but no one bothers to clean the ceiling. During hallucinations, he stares up at the ugly brown water spots until his eyes film with tears. He slows his breathing and forces it out through clenched teeth. Indifferent doctors telling him it's neural damage from the drugs. Brain all fried and fucked, probably permanently. Good, Rust thinks. A feeling of relief settling cold on his chest. The same feeling surging through him when Childress guts him. A feeling like _finally._

Then, Marty clears his throat and the sound jars Rust back from wherever he was. He looks up from Marty's sock-sandal combo and finds the sky is clear again, quiet, stars back to dotting the sky. He wonders how long he's been silent. His body feels foreign to him, feels stretched out, like he's still the person he was at twenty, at thirty, and like he's completely removed from all those other selves at the same time. 

"Um, you're all right, though?" Marty asks after a pause. Probably feeling guilty because he's still kind of a fucking prick, always has been.

"Yep," Rust replies.

"You sure," Marty says, changing the intonation so it doesn't sound like a question.

Rust's not sure Marty wants him to say anything, reckons a display of emotion on his part would just about send Marty right over the edge. Rust's heard him whimpering in his sleep. He knows Marty's got enough fucked up shit running through his own mind without adding Rust's weight to it.

"Just eat your fuckin' strawberries."

Maybe there's some part of him that expected the flashbacks to abate after he saw Sophia when he almost died, but they haven't. Still sees things. Still fixates. Still catches himself thinking in loops of tricycletricycletricycle. The breath still hitches in his throat, pulse thumping so fucking loud in his ears, making him ache for drink to dull his racing mind some. Rust can never quite recapture that feeling of peace, of serenity the color of midnight blue that he felt before he woke up. But he's got things to pull him back from the edge now, some faint memory of unadulterated love and acceptance that tastes like peaches. Makes him think he wants to keep going for now (a big thing for him. Hasn't genuinely wanted to live for decades). He's got people to keep living for now. Or one goddamn person, at least. 

Fuck, he thinks, when did I get so fucking sentimental? 

Marty gets to his feet real sudden as if to head back inside. He's shifting his weight back and forth between feet like he's got something to say frozen on the tip of his tongue. Walks past Rust, then stops and shuffles back. Rust can't see him, but can sense the hesitation and tension pouring off him before Marty's hand grips his shoulder tight. Rust lets it linger there, still not really sure how to navigate this newfound tenderness between them. Rust feels like maybe he should pat Marty's hand with his own or let his head bob against Marty's arm or say thank you.

Rust just keeps looking forward, and trusts Marty knows it means something to him just the same.


End file.
